Technology

Kroger announced it will be testing “cashier-less” technology in 2018. Business Insider reports Kroger's new "Scan, Bag, Go" technology allows customers to scan and pay for goods as they shop. Here's how it works: shoppers scan the barcodes of items they wish to purchase using a handheld scanner, provided by Kroger, or the chain's "Scan,…

Wal-Mart's Code Eight, the first portfolio company in its newly launched incubator, Store No. 8, has started testing personal shopping services for moms in New York City, Recode reports. The  service is targeted to “busy NYC moms ” who are "high net worth urban consumers" and will enable them to get product recommendations and make purchases simply through text messaging. The…

Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com’s CEO and founder, last week announced a joint venture to launch a global property registry system, based on blockchain technology, and added that he will either privatize or sell his e-commerce business within the next 90 days. "My goal is [within] 60 to 90 days we walk away from this," Byrne told…

Earlier this fall, eBay announced that it had launched two new image-based search tools — Image Search, Find It On eBay — for its mobile apps. The artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features enable shoppers to use pictures instead of words to search eBay’s catalog of 1.1 billion items. In this interview with Giri Iyengar, head of…

What motivates a consumer to walk into a store to make a purchase rather than shop online? Instant gratification? The inspiration that only comes from touch and smell? With 67 percent of the Gen Zs surveyed by IBM and the National Retail Federation preferring to shop in-store vs. 22 percent who favor online, there are tangible…

When it comes to in-store shopping during the holiday season, opinions tend to be mixed. PwC's “Retailers and the Age of Disruption” survey found that while 68 percent of respondents intentionally browse products in-store before purchasing them online, 73 percent said they browse online and then purchase the products in-store. Consumers can’t decide which channel to…

According to the 2018 Activate Outlook Report, grocery is the next battleground for e-commerce. Interestingly, the report makes a case that brick-and-mortar stores are an enabler of online growth, beckoning a future less interested in the extinction of physical stores, but rather a harmonization of physical and e-commerce retail experiences. Central to that harmonization is…

Augmented reality (AR) isn’t necessarily a new concept, but the recent rollout of Apple’s ARKit and the upcoming launch of Google’s ARCore has taken this technology to the next level, making it substantially more mainstream for every consumer and business across all industries. Similar to virtual reality’s (VR) impact on gaming/entertainment, AR’s use cases are…

Consumer loyalty reward programs across every facet of retail are antiquated and ineffective. Seventy-seven percent of adults in the United States participate in loyalty programs, however, more than $100 billion in loyalty points have gone unclaimed as trust in loyalty program benefits plummets. These rewards points go unused because consumers either don’t know how to claim…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the mother of all marketing buzzwords these days. Defined as the theory and development of computer systems to be able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, the broader applications of AI are much bigger than using a machine to order your food vs. having a waitress come to your…